Review of Aftermath

Review by Victoria Laurie

"I am displaced, floating from here to nowhere." These words may come to sum up the plight of millions of people in the early 21st century, as turmoil in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt triggers a mass exodus of people from their homelands. Australia is not immune; an influx of asylum-seekers from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan trickles on. When last month in Iraq alone 160 men, women and children were shot dead or blown up, one can hardly blame them.

Details

Venue: Octagon Theatre, UWA

Season: Tuesday 1 March, 7.30pm

Director: New York Theatre Workshop production

That despairing cry of displacement was uttered by an Iraqi refugee who had fled to neighbouring Jordan; his words were recorded there by a couple of New York playwrights Jessica Blank and Eric Jensen, along with those of around 35 others escaping war-torn Iraq. Their moving testimonies were then carefully crafted into the show Aftermath, into what amounts to an 80-minute witness statement on stage.

I initially assumed this show was a form of journalism-meets-theatre, in which interviews with real people caught up in news events are dramatized and twisted for theatrical effect. The idea sat uncomfortably with me; having interviewed a fair number of asylum-seekers myself, I know that already dramatic real life tales hardly need dramaticising.

But Aftermath is a beautifully crafted show that never slips into emotional sloppiness or propagandist advocacy. The nine people whose stories are delivered under the spotlight (by a wonderful cast from mainly Middle Eastern backgrounds) are allowed to tell their stories, seemingly their way. No doubt Blank and Jensen have done a huge amount of work paring sentences, adding slight emphasis or pause, matching one person's statement with a related observation of another; their skill is that the seams don't show at all.

We meet Fouad and his wife Naimah, both cooks, who were forced to flee Baghdad due to Shia-Sunni hatred, not Western allied troop aggression. Rafiq is a pharmacist who couldn't give drugs to distraught parents with dying children because of US-imposed sanctions; imam Abdul-Aliyy was imprisoned in Abu Ghraib because he dared express an opinion that occupation and Saddam's era differed little in the lives of ordinary Iraqis.

Clearly Blank and Jensen have been selective about which stories go in, just as even the most impartial journalists are making choices about whose voice is heard with every sentence they write. What comes across clearly is that Iraq is a complex country with a history of embedded rivalries that were unwittingly activated by ignorant military intervention. If Aftermath has no solutions to offer, it performs a rare service by bringing us knowledge, through the dignified testimony of Iraq's civilian sufferers.